11/14/08 - In honor of Journalism Day yesterday, the University of Rhode Island Journalism Department and the Rhode Island Press Association held two discussion panels to explain the importance of professionalism in the media.The first panel, entitled "Maintaining Journalistic Standards in a 24-hour News Cycle," discussed the implications for the press from the modern-day maelstrom that is the Internet. It was held in Atrium 1 in the Memorial Union yesterday morning, and was moderated by Sheila Mullowney, executive editor of The Newport Daily News.
The second panel was a retrospective analysis of this year's election, featuring veterans of electoral coverage, Jill Lawrence, Marc Genest and Ian Donnis. The event, "Lipstick on a Pig: A Look Back at the Election," discussed the media's treatment of the candidates.
For the first event, panelists Joel "Ed" Medina, director of multimedia development at the Boston Globe, John Martin, editor of Governing.com and Fred Harwood, the managing editor for the online content at the New Bedford Standard Times, all argued their views on the fate of the news in the "technological revolution" of the digital age.
One of the main topics discussed was the introduction of the Internet as a source of news and whether or not blogging and citizen journalism can be considered actual news. Martin said because the Web is such a new tool and most journalists are too busy doing their jobs instead of learning to new technology, news outlets have been slow to catch up to the speed and amount of content citizen journalism of the bloggosphere now obtain.
The first Internet based media he worked with was the Web site for Governing.com, "in 1996 with 'HTML for dummies' sitting on my lap," he said. "Now it's just a far more sophisticated [site]."
Martin added the site averages from 90,000 to 100,000 hits per month, which he said was more than the paper magazine's circulation, but he cited the trust and respect in the magazine as its main point of success. He said the most important asset of his magazine is the trust of the readers to provide accurate and ethical coverage that is crucial to its success, and that in turn helps the Web site.
"People have always trusted the magazine," Martin said. "What we wanted to do was transfer that over to the Web site."
He added this is one viable solution to the deteriorating situation of the newspaper as a viable news medium. His only caution was the danger and potential damage mistakes in coverage could make, either for independent bloggers or a major news media outlet.
As an example, President-elect Barrack Obama apparently refused a "fist bump" from a small child during a campaign rally. It had been later revealed that the child wanted a permanent marker Obama tattoo across his knuckles and the now President-elect refused, citing the reprisal of the child's mother. But the media ran with it as if Obama refused the child outright for no reason.
"Half the world still thinks that Obama refused a fist bump," he said. "The correction never catches up with the story."
Martin said blogging and "all those other technologies that haven't been invented yet," are not issues an entry-level reporter should be concentrating on, as there is much more involved in the standards of journalistic integrity than being able to get the story out quickly. Instead, he said, media outlets have to prove their integrity by being correct as much as possible.
"All we really have, and this has been built up for 170 years, is this credibility," he said. "That means we have to be very careful about assumptions and very careful about perceptions. It is very important to get it first, but getting it right has always been more important."
Harwood contended it was not the Internet that causes this hiccup in media integrity, but instead the 24/7 news cycle itself, in terms of the 24 hour news channels.
"The Internet didn't invent mistakes, journalists invented mistakes," Harwood said, adding the 24/7 news cycle has given his paper's Web site a bigger and more loyal audience by way of updates. He said while this can lead to mistakes, it levels out with consistent updates on the site in a timely fashion, encouraging the reader to keep coming back. He added immediacy on every detail is not required for the story to be viable.
Harwood said the issue weighing heavily on his mind is not blogging or the transference of media in general, as journalism has been through technological revolutions before, but instead he is more concerned about the print media's "shrinking newsrooms" and the financial problems causing it.
"Now [you] not only do not have the luxury having the same number of people doing the print product and online product," Harwood said. "You have fewer people doing the print product and online product. This is nothing new."
Medina said the Internet is not the root cause of the media downturn, as dealing with new technology has been a mainstay of professional journalism.
"Technology has been around for a long, long time," he said. "I think the real question is how can we [objectively report the news] without selling out your values or compromising your standards."
He discussed an example of a reporter using new technology to his advantage during the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.
This reporter, A. Merriman Smith, was in the motorcade during the tragic final moments of Kennedy, and heard three shots. Medina said he used a new type of phone in the car that allowed him to contact his news desk with the headline, 'Three shots fired,' which was read on the national television news by Walter Cronkite nine minutes later.
"That's probably one if the most famous breaking news headlines ever written in our country," Medina said. "This is story in my mind is the best and currently the most poignant examples of breaking-news reporting, probably in our history."
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